Artist ready to repair Hilltop mural in spring

The graffiti scrawled on the new Hilltop mural depicting the neighborhood's Civil War-era past will be removed, but not for several months.

On Monday, the Westgate Neighbors Association agreed to provide $200 to help restore the mural, but artist Curtis Goldstein said he won't touch it up until the weather clears, in March or April.

The graffiti scrawled on the new Hilltop mural depicting the neighborhood's Civil War-era past will be removed, but not for several months.

On Monday, the Westgate Neighbors Association agreed to provide $200 to help restore the mural, but artist Curtis Goldstein said he won't touch it up until the weather clears, in March or April.

That means residents have to look at the mess for a while.

"People have been hurt and mad," said Sue Laughlin, vice president of Friends of Westgate Park, which has received offers of money to repair the damage.

Goldstein, who finished the mural in the fall, said he is disappointed.

"Everyone was so glad to have a project like this in the community."

One tag defaces a portrait of the camp commander, Union Army Col. George W. Neff. Another is scrawled over a smoky scene of Confederate soldiers. Police said they are not sure who did it or why.

Goldstein agreed to maintain the mural for 10 years. He'll be paid $25 an hour for about eight hours of touch up work.

Goldstein said he'll match the colors and perhaps apply an anti-graffiti clear coat that can be stripped if the wall is tagged again.

"I want to make sure it's around" for a long time, he said.

The Friends of Westgate Park have asked the city to aim a security camera at the mural. The Recreation and Parks Department has trained a light on the mural since December.

Camp Chase, where the Westgate neighborhood began developing in the 1920s, was home to Confederate prisoners and served as a training area for Union soldiers.

The graffiti went up just before Christmas, less than three months after Goldstein completed the mural that covers the exterior wall of a handball court at Westgate Park.

Some opposed the mural, saying it presents too many images of the Confederacy.

But the Friends of Westgate Park worked diligently for nearly three years on the project, securing $14,500 in grants to hire Goldstein to paint a tribute to the camp that once defined the neighborhood.

Lois Neff feared this would happen. Neff, of the Hilltop Historical Society, said taggers hit the handball court a number of times before Goldstein started the mural over the summer.

Goldstein said his dozen or so public murals have remained largely untouched. Someone painted the word "Crip" on a winter canal scene in Newark, and someone drove a car into his Short North "Cliff Dwellers" mural that is based on a George Bellows painting.